


Astoria

by VanillaMostly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Meh, i didn't make up the ending!!!, i love this ship but why does it have to be so mopey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 08:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaMostly/pseuds/VanillaMostly
Summary: They said Astoria saved him. She didn’t like the sound of that.





	Astoria

 

They said Astoria saved him. She didn’t like the sound of that. She was no saintly angel and he was no wounded victim. No, they were just two lonely people who happened to get together, nothing romantic about that.

It was after the war, and there were two kinds of Slytherins. There was the bitter and resentful Slytherin like Pansy Parkinson, still defiant as hell and bent on making their names into the paper. Then there was the quiet Slytherin who made himself scarce, retreating behind closed doors and into hidden corners, who’d rather wipe away their past and start anew.

Astoria and Draco just both happened to be the second kind.

The Draco she met after the war was not anybody’s idea of a coveted bachelor. He could barely hold a conversation without looking away. He wore long sleeves in the summer, and he was jumpy to even a handshake. Astoria remembered the Malfoy he’d been at school, with his arrogance draped around his shoulders like he was entitled to the world. There was nothing of that Malfoy left now. Astoria thought, all things considered, this was an improvement. When she told Draco this his face changed into a semblance of a smile.

She didn’t know how it happened, but they were somehow together. She didn’t expect it to last, but somehow it did. They kept things low-profile but Draco could never withhold secrets from his mother for long. Mrs Malfoy did like Astoria in the beginning. The Greengrasses were a reputable family back in the day, and anyhow it was slim pickings now if Narcissa wanted pureblood grandchildren.

Of course, that changed a few family dinners in. The Malfoys started whispering about her Curse but Draco didn’t care. He said the only curse he believed in was the one branded on his arm the year he was sixteen. That shut them up.

Draco didn’t want children, and Astoria didn’t think she did either. But then she was assigned to the birth and delivery ward and began holding babies every day and handing them to tired but beaming parents. Soon enough she started imagining a baby with her eyes and Draco’s pale hair. It went deeper than that, too. She’d lost her family to the war and her in-laws would always be Draco’s family but never her own.

Draco gave in, after they agreed they would not raise their child the way their parents had raised them.

Scorpius was born on a cool day in November. They named him after the constellation reigning his astrology charts as was Malfoy tradition. That was the last piece of Malfoy tradition Astoria allowed.

He had her eyes and Draco’s hair, just as she imagined, and more. His cheeks were like Daphne and his snort was just like her father and his beautiful long fingers were like her mother.

As Scorpius grew taller and stronger, she grew weaker and smaller. But her mind remained clear and sharp. For better or worse, she didn’t know. In those days when Scorpius clung to her crying, when Draco bashed the wall in anger she wished she could be blind and oblivious to all of that. But then there were good days when she could be wheeled out into the garden and tend to her tomatoes, when she could have her notebook open in her lap and write down everything she wanted her son to know.

On the last day, her husband stayed with her after all the Healers had gone, after Scorpius ran out of the room because he couldn’t stand to see his mother die. Astoria didn’t fault him.

She closed her eyes, leaned up against Draco. She hadn’t been alone with him in a while, just the two of them. Draco who wasn’t a demonstrative man put his arm around her and held her hand. A practiced Legilimens and Occlumens, he opened his mind to hers and let her know all that he couldn’t say out loud. She laughed, in the middle of her cough.

“I didn’t save you. You saved yourself.”

She was about to add that they were just two lonely souls who happened to get together, and nothing romantic about that, but she thought about it and changed her mind.

“I’m glad it was you, Malfoy.”

“Same here, Greengrass.”

And that was as expressive as they would get. Astoria smiled. She put her cheek up to his chest, felt through his thin shirt the rhythm of his beating heart, and wished that when hers stopped it would continue as his.

 

**Author's Note:**

> can i just say that the "canon" where Astoria dies tragically is really stupid. even tho I wrote it here.
> 
> sigh... not very happy with this fic, i believe Astoria has a stronger personality than I portrayed here, but the tone of the thing just came out like this. i'm not very good at doing angst. Ah well.


End file.
